Oh my Dump Truck, Oh my Dump Truck

June was hard but fun!  At the beginning of the month Dane and I celebrated 6 years of marriage by going shooting and Greek/Armenian food.  We had a blast.  Dane is becoming a really great firearms instructor.

 The hard part about the last two months has been Hinckley's gas pains.  A friend let me try out some acid reflux medication and, while it did help with his daytime discomfort, he and I were up for 2-3 hours a night in May and June with his gas pain.  It really started to take a toll on my patience with poor Atticus (and everyone else).

Finally, after our trip to Bryce Canyon (details to follow) I took the little man to a gastroenterologist.  Oh, how I wish we had made this trip months ago.  Based on Hinckley's symptoms he was pretty sure the little guy has a milk protein allergy.  I gathered some lovely stool samples (way harder than I expected!) and we are still awaiting the lab results.  In the meantime, I am happy to report that his gas pain has almost completely been eliminated now that I've cut out all dairy products.  I'm definitely missing it, but it's more than worth it so that we can all sleep.

The main event of the month was the Maes family reunion at Bryce Canyon.  Dane's grandpa Ernie turned 85 and we celebrated in style.  Here is Hinckley on our way there.  He and Atticus are becoming better travel companions.

 Bryce Canyon is beautiful!  And it's official: Atticus LOVES hanging out with extended family.  He spent almost the entire time with grandparents, cousins, and his great-aunts and uncles.  (Here he is getting him with silly string- it was revenge 20+ years in the making for Dane).  A week after we came home he was still telling us he "just [wanted] to go back to the hotel!"

 
As difficult as the nights were (trying to help a gassy baby without waking Atticus or Bob and Marti next door) the days were a relief- I had so many people who wanted to hold Hinckley.  Lucky boy.

Above- a "shark" tree that Atticus found and "Bowman" the very friendly chipmunk.

Dane was pretty sick during the reunion (he ended up needing antibiotics) so Atticus and I went on our own adventure from Inspiration Point.  He was such a great hiking companion.  He even sang when I started to get tired on the way back (he's getting big!)   

 The rest of the month has been pretty much spent in the pool.

Atticus has been taking swim lessons from our awesome neighbor and it's amazing how quickly he has progressed in one month.  Here he is after just 5 lessons:

It has been so fun to see him grow in confidence.

   Hinckley starting sitting up for real at the family reunion.  Hooray!  He is so much more content now that he can sit and play with a toy.  He has started sharing his binky (so cute!) and has revealed that he has a surprisingly long tongue.

 Oh, this little lamb.  He is so stinking cute that, when we visited the gastroenterologist, all of the nurses in the office took a break to fawn over him.  I heard one of them telling her coworkers she needed to tell her husband that she had "another man in her life."

These boys are growing closer and closer.  Atticus keeps asking to "hold the baby."  He even successfully sang the baby to sleep for the first time a couple days ago.  

 

Things got hard again the last week of the month.  Hinckley woke up from a nap with a fever that lasted 3 days.  We were getting even less sleep than before from the gas and Dane was out of the state (again!)  On day 4, after having had nurses recommend waiting it out, he woke up from another nap very fussy and sounding hoarse.  I could wait no longer and took him to urgent care.  Sure enough, he had an ear infection.  Thank heavens for antibiotics and modern medicine.

As always, there were sweet moments during the worst of it.  At one point, after trying to get Hinckley sleep for what seemed the 10th time, I started to cry.  Atticus came over to me with his arms spread out wide and gave me a hug and a kiss.  He then started grabbing toys for me and bringing them to me. It definitely helped.

Another pick-me-up came in the form of the sister missionaries.  While their visit had initially had a very different purpose, at the end they asked if they could help me clean a little.  With a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes, all I could say was, "Sure!"  While I took care of the baby upstairs they tidied up downstairs.  

When I came downstairs they had not only left things looking terrific but had left sweet notes of encouragement all around.  Here are just a couple of them: 

I truly felt like they had acted as the Lord's hands in my life that day.  It was a good reminder that He can send angels into our path to remind us that he is was aware of us and what we are going through.  And he could forgive me for all the countless times I had lost my temper with poor Atticus.

Atticusisms:

• "Mustard on your head!"
• "If you let me cut your toenails you'll get a treat."
• "When I'm a daddy and Brinlee is a mommy we can marry each other in the temple."
• "Let's pretend we're marrying each other." (he is starting to talk about marrying Mommy, ha ha!)
• "I'm going to freak out for peaches!"
• "See you at the hotel, buddy!" (to Uncle Rick)
• "I want to cut [that chipmunk] up and eat it!"
• "Oh my dump truck, oh my dump truck" (sung to My Darling Clementine)
• "No way, Jose!" (said for no, pretty much all the time of late)
• "How does a snake smile?" 
• "Do Power Rangers listen to God?"
• "You can't hear the Holy Ghost if you yell."
• "I'm not so sure about that."

Bouncy music and the Boot-scootin'-boogie

Back in April we had a family photo shoot.  

 We just LOVE our photographer.  
Check her out at https://www.facebook.com/heidibrownphotography/

We're so happy to have our littlest guy documented!  Now to get one of them up on the wall...

Here's a cute outtake:

And like that, it's summer!  Hinckley is 7 months and Atticus is 3 and a half.
  

Hinckley was 17 lbs 6 oz. at his 6 month appointment.   All of his measurements were near the 50th percentile so, as the doctor put it, he is the quintessential American baby boy for now.

Ahhhh, he is the cutest stinking little thing.  He blows raspberries like nobody's business, loves to fold in half and hold his feet, can do a mean gorilla sit, and got his second tooth on May 8th (so he was 6.5 months).  If you look closely at the picture above, you can see those adorable teeth.  He has become very vocal and will let you know right away how he's feeling.  He HATES having anything taken away from him (even if it's something that could kill him...)

He started to back up in circles at the beginning of the month, and then, mid-month, he started scooting backward, on his back.  It's hilarious.  He'll roll around like a steam roller and then back up with little jumps.  I call it the boot-scootin-boogie.

Atticus did the army crawl for months, so we are cracking up.  These two kiddos seem to be opposites in many ways.

He has also started babbling.  Yep.  His first easily distinguishable syllable is "Da da," just like Atticus.

An unfortunate, unforgettable part of our month was Hinckley's stomach issues.  He has not tolerated solids well, at all.  After trying several different foods we decided to go off of solids for a week or two.  After a few days the gas pains and diarrhea subsided, but he has still been teething like crazy and waking up every three hours.  We're still trying to figure it out, so any advice (and prayers, ha ha!) would be appreciated.  Atticus has a stomach of steel, so this is new territory for us.

Oh these two.  Atticus really is growing into his role as big brother.  Sometimes he's still not too thrilled about it but then he has shining moments, like when he'll start singing "Gethsemane" to help calm the Hinckley down.  He LOVES kissing, hugging and tickling him and lately is always asking if he can play with him.

Atticus also hit an amazing milestone in May- he read his first word.  He's been watching "Word World" on Amazon Prime.  One day I pulled some magnetic letters off the fridge and placed them on the counter in front of Atticus.  I turned around to do something else and to my great surprise the crazy kiddo read them!  "Bat!"  While a lot of it is mostly guesswork, he is off to a great start!  He's still a 3-year-old, so it's not easy to get him to focus, but when I can convince him to play "pictionary" with me (with the letters that he knows!) he is sounding things out wonderfully.

 I am SO sad that Joy School is over.  Just today Atticus was saying he wanted to go to school. 
Here's our last day of class (at my house), when we talked about community helpers and, specifically, firefighters and how to "Stop, Drop, and Roll."

The next week we followed up the lesson with a field trip to the fire station.  It was our last hurrah and we had a wonderful time!  We even got to see them leave on a call.  Atticus totally wants to be a firefighter now and we are wholeheartedly encouraging him!

On May 13th we celebrated Mother's Day.  This was definitely the best one yet.  Dane, Atticus and Hinckley made me feel very loved!

I just LOVE this kiddo!  We were able to go on our first "date" a couple weeks later and had a blast.

Speaking of mothers, here's a photo of me and my mom back when I was in high school:

I just love this woman!

 Atticus is so lucky!  The weekend after Mother's Day he got to go on his first camp out with his dad and Bobba.  They didn't get much sleep but they really had a great time.

We just started swim lessons and gymnastics at the end of the month.  He LOVES gymnastics but is verrrry anxious about swimming (last year was pretty traumatic).

As much as I've dreaded these lessons, it led to a pretty special teaching moment.  His first day he was very afraid and so we prayed that he would feel brave and be safe.  He was still afraid but went out and had a great time!  It was awesome.

Another, similar teaching moment came when he was screaming.  For once I had the presence of mind to avoid yelling back.  We knelt in prayer to help him calm down and say what was on his mind.  It worked.  He immediately told me that he was worried that his friend was going to be mean to him.  So we said another prayer that his friend would be nice.  When we picked him up and asked how it went, he was very positive about it.

Now, if only I could have moments like that more than once a month...

Atticusisms:

• "Yes and no."
• "Actually..."
• "We're workers!  Right, Bowman?"  "I'm an instruction worker." 
• "My back is hurting because you're talking."
• "Let's turn on some bouncy music and get to work!" (before cleaning- very little cleaning gets done, I should add.  He settles in with a blanket and just listens.)
• "Stop laughing at me, Hinckley!  It's not funny!"
• "Hinckley, listen to your mom or she'll spank your bum!"
• "Heavenly Fadder will protect me!" (while doing a pretty risky trick)
• "Dear Heavenly Father, help me to get a pirate ship toy."
• "We're laughing and making fun of you!" (to Mommy)
• Pretend phone calls with his hand to his ear-
• "Bowman, I need you to come and bring your weapons!"
• "I need to call Daddy to see if that's scary...Dad?  Are these snakes scary?"
• [While his friends pretend to go to Disneyland] "I have to go to work!"  [Goes behind the couch for half a minute, then comes back out.] "Now I can go to Disneyland!"
• "I don't want a sister." ("Why?") "Because I'm fighting with Skye every day!"